Odyssey 3.470 · Book 3, lines 470–472
The feast, and wine in golden cups
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οἱ δʼ ἐπεὶ ὤπτησαν κρέʼ ὑπέρτερα καὶ ἐρύσαντο, δαίνυνθʼ ἑζόμενοι· ἐπὶ δʼ ἀνέρες ἐσθλοὶ ὄροντο οἶνον οἰνοχοεῦντες ἐνὶ χρυσέοις δεπάεσσιν.
And when they had roasted the outer meat and drawn it off the spits, they sat and feasted; and noble men waited on them, pouring the wine into golden cups.
Word by word
The setting
The roasting is done. The company settles to the meal, with attendants pouring wine from golden cups — the easy abundance of Nestor's house.
A note on this passage
The rite resolves into a shared meal. The company sits, the roasted flesh is served, and well-born attendants pour wine from cups of gold — the fixed, contented close of a Homeric sacrifice, where worship and dinner are the same table.
The detail that carries weight is the gold. Nestor's Pylos is a house of quiet, unstrained wealth — later the poem will gild a heifer's very horns here — and the golden cups belong to that portrait. The abundance is not shown off; it is simply the medium in which this old, secure kingdom lives, and against which the poverty and disorder of Odysseus's own besieged hall will register when Telemachus finally returns to it.
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